


What We Don’t Know

by JackedofSpades



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen, Ro2SID, Ro2SID Exhange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackedofSpades/pseuds/JackedofSpades
Summary: For Ursula for the Ro2SID Exchange 2019: the prompt was “Anaander/Tisarwat: there is one piece of information that Tisarwat will not share."





	What We Don’t Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UrsulaKohl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/gifts).



My gloves pull, sounding slightly as I curl my fingers around the edge of the table. It’s a bad habit, one I should know better than to forget, but a habit understandably brought on by the anxiety and expectation of the moment.  
  
“And you’ve only recently passed the aptitudes?”

“Yes, my lord.” I keep my eyes averted when I reply, willing them not to spill over with tears, but I feel her cross the room. My head still aches from medical, and from the anesthesia of whatever procedure had been required for this assignment. It was hard to focus.

She stops, folds her hands neatly and holds them at waist height as she looks out the window, down into the concourse below. 

  
“And what did you score?”  
  
My chin snaps up, and my eyes water with doubt. I can’t remember. How could I not remember?

  
“It’s a very simple question.” A voice says softly in my ear, low and bent behind me. I put my hands in my lap and turn around as if she would be there.

  
“Focus on me, little one.” Anaander says too sweetly, like the perfumed ichor of a carnivorous plant.  
  
A memory supplies itself for me, and I diligently recite, “A perfect score. Mother was very proud, and Anlin rather depressed. She knew I would take over the house, and also that I had cheated.”

  
Something about what I’ve said seems odd, but I can’t place it. My head feels heavy, but my lord nods her head serenely, as if pleased. Relief floods me. I would do anything to appease her, anything to be dismissed and head back to hurry back to meet Hastei for dinner before I go. Anything to get these strange memories out of my head and to have those promised sweet dumplings, celebrating my new assignment.

I watch curiously as my lord fixes her gaze on me as her hands unfold, blooming into a series of twitched commands.  
  
My vision blurs, my head suddenly dizzy. A tiny itch begins to nag, growing into insistent pain.

“Begging your indulgence, my lord but I don’t feel well and not quite myself. Might I be excused?”

“Indeed, you may.”

Quicker than I thought possible, she closes the distance between us, slamming my head into the table. I scream, or think to scream, but my mouth does not obey. I feel blood begin to trickle down my ear, and from a wound above it. The last thing that person thought before becoming me was a silly, frivolous thing: “Now I’ll never get to brag about meeting the Lord of the Radch to Hastei.”

I stood up then, once the connection had been reset, fully clicked home into that person’s brain. Anaander released me, nonchalantly offering tea as if nothing had happened. I took it gingerly, wiping the blood off of the side of my head with my glove. The person I had just been, moments ago, would have been more horrified at that, than what had happened.

“You’ll be going to Athoek with her, as you well know.”

“She’ll find out. The ancillary is clever and trusts no one.”

“Perhaps, and maybe even it is likely. No matter. Even if she kills you, she won’t do it right away. I’ll get something out of it.”

She was right. She had picked this person exactly for their uselessness: _Justice of Toren_ would see a weak, innocent child. She would hesitate, and that moment could be an opening.

But there was something Anaander did not know, even as she claimed to be me, even as I thought of myself as her. The implant, painful and boring into my head was a bullet moving in reverse.

“You’ll report everything to me. If you encounter any other of myselves, do not obey them, even if it draws suspicion. Even if it gets you killed.”

She had overrides for me, of course. I was compelled to obey. I would obey. And then I would not obey, until the point that the person I am now was killed.

“Yes, my lord.”

She left without another word, satisfied with her work. I moved over to the table, wiped the rest of the blood off the wood with my other glove before removing them both. Then I crossed the room and stared down into the concourse.

Immediately, I began to outline a plan, how I’d manipulate the ancillary, win her or force her to my side, whether with sympathy or overrides, and then feed both Anaanders false information. I had access to them both now, overwhelming and horrible as it was. I would take my own revenge, my own reparations; against myselves. Though I admit, it was hard to wonder how I’d find the will to live to see it to completion, now stuck as I was in the body of a vapid teenager with no means of duplicating myself. I hadn’t had to live with the threat of true death in millenia, but the thought of rejoining with Anaander at any point was worse.

As I watched citizens buzz about, I pulled up ship manifests, mined every news channel, pulled every backdoor camera and tapped every implant Anaander has secreted from her other selves that I now had access to. A single miscalculation. A single implant not quite fitted and now I had more access to her than even she. Had she taken the extra time to do it properly, I would simply be her obeying her command more or less willingly, and not some other person.

But Anaander had never been one to do things Properly, and instead of placing a new pawn on the board, she had added another player.

  
  



End file.
